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Luis Zahera: “Feijóo is a great performer, a divo”

2022-03-18T21:26:24.350Z


The veteran Galician actor premieres the second season of 'La Unidad' and is still waiting for a role that resists him


Luis Zahera (Santiago de Compostela, 55 years old) is everywhere.

Today premieres

La Unidad 2

(Movistar Plus+);

a few days ago,

Entrevías

(Telecinco) and

Operación

Marea Negra

(Amazon Prime Video), and is going on tour with humorous monologues.

He has regrets about working too hard in a profession where so many wait for the phone to ring.

“We are always the same.

It would have to be renewed."

A luxury secondary, in 30 years on the job he won a Goya, but a role still eludes him.

Ask.

It's finally good!

Answer.

Yes, in

The Unit

.

I think it has been too much to ask the apostle Santiago.

And also that with age I'm softening...

P.

You are already closer to the role of leading man.

Who do you think is the best in movie history?

Which one would you have liked to play?

A.

The movies I like the most are the love ones.

To be a good heartthrob there has to be a good story, even Dustin Hoffman in

Tootsie

is a good heartthrob.

I identify with him (laughs).

And I really like Cary Grant in

Chained

.

P.

So shaved it will cost a little more.

Was it a promise or demands of the script?

R.

It is due to the requirements of the script for a project in which they have asked us for confidentiality.

It's a tribute to Lex Luthor, the bad guy from

Superman

.

In this project I work with some kids so young that they didn't know who he was.

One told me if Lex Luthor was a German.

Once again, a 17-year-old actor from the Canary Islands did not know who Charlot was.

He hadn't seen anything of hers.

Of course, they are all day with the mobile...

P.

By almost always playing the bad guy, you have avoided the uncomfortable sex scenes.

R.

My nephews always asked me about the money and the sex scenes.

I only had one, with Candela Peña.

But where the real intimacy is, let the fiction be removed.

P.

And what does Aunt Cefe say about all this?

R.

Always the same: "You did the fool very well in that movie, but couldn't you open your eyes less?".

He is a 92 year old sun.

The last thing he told me is that he thinks some acquaintance went to visit her just for a selfie with my Goya [best supporting actor for

El Reino,

by Rodrigo Sorogoyen].

He has it on the shelf.

Q.

You have shot again with Sorogoyen, in this case

As Bestas

, based on a true story.

Is Galicia a gold mine or does it depend?

R.

I do not want to sound pretentious, but it hurts me a little that Galicia seems to be drug trafficking or third world.

It's a seam, but you have to open it.

Nonetheless, I am delighted to be working with Sorogoyen.

He became obsessed with that true story, two beasts that run into a marriage that is modernity, it is the fight for territory, borders...

Q.

Is it true that you lost papers because of your accent?

R.

Yes. Before I went to a

casting

and they told me: “I like you a lot, but you have a strong accent.

It will not be possible".

Now there is no major problem and luckily because I am quite hard of hearing and it is difficult for me to “go to neutral”.

Q.

What Galician cliché would you say is true and what is that, a cliché?

R.

The bad topic is drug trafficking.

My father always said that being Galician was a career.

His father had spent 9 years in Buenos Aires and 11 in Cuba, and mine said that in the sense that a Galician always makes his way.

When I went to New York for two years, he told me: “Don't worry, you're Galician”.

And look, I met people from Muros and Esteiro in New York.

P.

There I washed dishes...

R.

I washed dishes and got to work in demolitions in the Twin Towers.

When they fell, my father called me on the phone and to tease me he said: "My son, you have nothing to do with it, right?"

Emigrating served to wake me up because he was very scared.

P.

The one who is about to emigrate is your

older brother

, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

Did it cost a lot to convince you to make that announcement from Galicia with him?

R.

Yes, it will also emigrate at the end.

It didn't take them long to convince me.

I am a BNG voter.

At that time this megacrispation of death began.

Many people told me: “Don't do this”, but I liked the idea that although we vote and are different, we can understand each other.


P.

Did you see the wood of an actor?

Not so long ago Feijóo cried saying that he was staying in Galicia.

R.

Yes, I found it impressive.

In the short distance he is super nice, as we say in Galicia, very

pavero.

And then you saw him with that serious rictus of a political actor.

He is a great performer, a star, a legend, like Gayoso.

P.

Jordi Hurtado has won fame, but Xosé Ramón Gayoso must be there-there in television longevity with

Luar

, the program where you started.

R.

With

Luar

he has already done 30 years.

In A Coruña they stopped me one day on the street and they told me: “Petróleo, [a character he played in the series

Mareas Vivas

, also on TVG], what world are we going to leave Gayoso with?”.

He is eternal.

They are all dying.

Q.

If current politics were a movie, would it be

a thriller

, horror, comedy...?

R.

It would be one of aliens, an invasion.

I am politically scared.

The “either you are one of them or the enemy” thing scares me.

Q.

Two years of the pandemic have just passed.

Do we come out better or already?

R.

They said that after the pandemic we would return to a kind of happy twenties and I believed it.

But we have been invading Ukraine for more than 20 days and we are in

shock.

It is a horror and on top of that you realize that it worries you because it happens in Europe, because we remember the first 20 minutes of the war in Syria and that is a slap in the face as a citizen.

As a Galician I am extremely pessimistic.

P.

A producer told you: "Men mature, women age."

What did she think when she heard it?

R.

I come from a family of women, I have four older sisters.

Whoever told me that was a powerful guy.

It is a world of men, although a certain change begins to be noticed after

Me too

.

Before, it would not have been possible for Nathalie Poza to star in, for example,

La Unidad

.

In the movies you see a 55-year-old who has a 26-year-old girlfriend and a 35-year-old actress who has a 27-year-old daughter. You should look at that.

Q.

Thanks to

La Unidad

, you met Manuel, one of the police officers in the fight against terrorism.

He was at the premiere.

Did you like him?

R.

He is an exceptional guy.

He is excited that he interprets it.

He told me that his whole family had called him and that he didn't know if they were calling for him or for me.

He is dedicated to locating and neutralizing terrorists.

He has been promoted to commissioner and we are very proud of him.

We are already preparing the next meal.

He always takes us to some wonderful and very rare places that he knows from his meetings with spies and secret super-policemen from other countries.

Q.

You don't normally play people in real life, but in

Cell 211

you proposed to change the profile of your character.

R.

Yes. In the eighties in Galicia I had quite a few friends in prison.

I went to see them, and I began to have contacts with officials.

There I saw that there was a type of sick inmates, drug addicts completely gone, medicated, lying in the courtyard... My character in

Cell 211

was going to be a hyperviolent prisoner, but we spoke with the director about the possibility of turning Releches into that, a little pet that does anything for a piece of paper.

P.

For what things in everyday life would you like to have a double?

A.

For technology because I am totally digitally illiterate.

I don't even know how to look at the Renfe timetables.

I'm totally dependent, if I talk to Siri I start to sweat...

Q.

And what shot of your life would you like to repeat if you could?

R.

Uf, I speculate a lot with that.

Relationships, times when I misbehaved.

But “although nothing can bring us back the hour of splendor in the grass, we should not grieve because beauty subsists in memory”.

[Poem by William Wordsworth that Natalie Wood recites in

Splendor in the Grass

(1961)].

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Source: elparis

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